Monday, September 28, 2009

The place was packed…Thoughtforms were in the foyer… filling up the empty sky-space with distorted thunder; we hung off the stairs, soaking it all up… as always, I was loving them, the tide switching from menace to mesmerising as the tunes spread out of their original outlines, like a berserk sewing machine playing patchwork crazy paving with your head.

Cloudboy jr was grinning as Deej sacrificed his guitar in depth charged collapse – wow’s beaming out of his eyes, as he looked up and said ‘They’re better than Nirvana…’, the last two tracks were seriously damaged, the final a fx-ed conversation of cross hatchery and gallowed strings… a blistering set that guaranteed a stampede towards the merch stall.

Next it was a main hall treat from Matt W, a self penned score for Baphomet, A hybrid of Emerald note assembly and Baba Yaga’s distended vowel sounds with a smattering of old time latin cream to seal the arcane deal, I was getting an extra special pan-sonic remix through the ill speaker in front of me, as the dead skin cells of concert goers long gone crackled through the diaphragm …

please permit this hell shitttttt, go the choir and Cloudy jr looked up and bluntly said it was rubbish, but I was loving every minute and my son's just a complete guitar disciple, wishing I had remembered the bloody video camera though…. this skewed academia of slashed strings and drum rumbles was giving me the sonic shivers…

Last time I saw Rosie Red Rash they were all girls, looks like two of them have undergone a sex change… A punk foursome with the bass sounding all dub slap, with plenty of beaten propellant…the front girl vocals clinching the deal. I was a dancing comedy of shaking head and flailing arms for a few tunes, with the closing ‘Zombie’ complete with b-movie screams being something rather special indeed… I grabbed one of their cdr’s for junior, costing a mere quid…

Caught a bit of Crippled Black Phoenix from up in the gods, they were bobbing specks but the sound was anything but… an ocean of heads below us… Wanted to stay for the rest especially ZU but it was well passed junior’s bedtime and he was tugging my arm to go… so after saying our goodbyes we hit the road with a RRR filled car...

Nibbled on the best chips I’ve tasted in a long time as we wandered back through Park Street, sucking on the fishy smells floating out of the Hatchet’s open windows. The city was starting to take on a different life, the air getting chilly…we played the polystyrene cartons, they mixed well with the gulls and traffic… back at the Colston, time was slipping, eel like…

Later Ignatz was a burning coal in all that darkness… the vintage projectors making his legs all fiery , his guitar the colour of a baked bean can, working vespers through darkened loops and a vox that was otherworldly, cryptic, indecipherable, his playing, lifting the anchor and drifting away, the architecture half perceived and intense…

People were horizontal for Chris Forsyth’s guitar assault, laying back, taking it all in as we started setting up our gear… By the time he’d pared it back to folksy marauding, I had the buttock clenching fears that only playing can ease…and i think Kek was the same.

Turned out to be fun, Kek in his headgear, working his ukulele scrapes and creepy hamburger lady kazoo, all jester squid to my bleached bone animus, clatter keys and drilled gut-tar… both of us crumpling the sound up Korg stylee … the dead channelling themselves through smeared vocals, growls etc. After excelling in sound check, it was a shame the printing plate failed to bring on the thunder …

A few youtubed moments are forthcoming, as soon as the laptop starts behaving itself. Oh yes, hats off to Helen, who came down just to see us and rushed off soon after to catch the last train home, and Rasha’s excellent soundwork…

Packed away to the sounds of Headfall, those high vocals mixing up a bewildering cocktail, the sound kicking you where it should….

Met with friendly faces out by the merch, gave Deej a shakin in the bar, then cool American beer chill, the spiders were curling the corners but I was ignoring them, then more chat and back in the hall to catch Silver Pyre’s folksy tints and peppered drum patterns – I fucking luv their stuff…

Kek told me we freaked Ignatz out at Kraak, made him hide behind a dumpster or some'ut…it made me chuckle as the dj warped n distorted some classic tunes right outa shape …

Later Es’s ecclesiastical slippages were truly tranquilising – gradual peelings of organ pipes, the silhouettes of bare trees mimicking the loopage, I started filming Giles’s face, the auto focus on the camcorder drifting in and out of focus to the music and flickering light… the minimal beauty soaking really deep...

Caught a bit of Gravenhurst’s set… quite beautiful indie acoustika, he played my favourite song off the ‘flashlight session’ album but I was seriously flagging by this point and decided to call it a night, missing James B’s set completely…

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

This recent addition to Arklight’s sprawling back catalogue is like an unearthed diary of scribbled thoughts served up on a broken cameo of junky loops and Harry Smith porch-lit reflection. Reminds me of early Crescent but through sick batteries, the kinda thing that creeps all over you like the sodium sparks of passing traffic… a full review is formulating and will be hitting the blog soon, along with a few choice mp3's... that’s if I survive the weekend...

Me and Kek will be flying out to perform some smooth-lounge-core classics on the freshly laid wooden floors of the Colston Hall foyer this Friday, as part of the on-going celebrations cumulating in Invada’s invasion of the place on the following day… many thanks to Chez n Mark for inviting us to play...

…Dj Baz (lamentably absent from recent shows) was chuffed that the qu-junktion peeps saw fit to use one of his IBS Cube show snaps in the publicity…

We’ll be sharing the bill with El-g’s pal Ignatz and Fonal’s Sammi in ES guise, plus a handpicked selection of Bristol’s finest.

As well as the above, I’ll be looking forward to seeing Silver Pyre again after their storming Arnolfini debut, James Brewster (aka Mole Harness) who I 've not seen in action since that Mi and Lau show back in 2005 and Team Brick’s favourite, Headfall…

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Just when you thought Justin Broadrick was disappearing into guitar ambience forever, he forms this kick arse band with his mates called Greymachine, and boy it’s the business, click on the image and taste those gnarled sonics for yrself...

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The Trinity was a fitting venue for this double bill, a deconsecrated church with huge oak panelling running the length of the stage…the vestry tucked away in the half light… beams disappearing into the darkness, the place oozing gothic…

The first band were Blood Ceremony and hailed from Canada, they were fronted by this Velvet clad pixie with cobwebbed legs…a wooden pentagram swinging from her neck… Throwing out frozen poses, palm stags and clenched fists between power chord heaven and Korg churchy swells… Occasionally, she supplied bursts of flute that were jaunty foils which leapt between the rock action, Mr O reckoned they sounded like Led Zep, but more folksy… I quite liked them, but wished she’d used that keyboard more, it had this delicious Dr Phibes vibe… The last track was about Pan, some joker next to me shouted out ‘what, frying pan?’…

Electric Wizard blew the cobwebs away… A monster of power-chords and drums… with plenty of School of Rock guitar luv… … The lead, full of enthusiastic fret noodles, classic facial expressions floating away with each lick… Hair was swaying everywhere to their heavy riffage, the Wizard vibes reducing the audience to a tide of nodding heads. 70’s chromatics came a flooding in, with flashes of mosh violence from the crowd, the lead’s head haloed in a glow of yellow…

For the most part, the scary tattooed bassist just stood there stoic, like some apocalyptic statue, Māori ink spread up his arms, eddies of white swirl on the elbows, face swallowed in shadow .. just his fingers dishing out the meat to the hungry…

Recognised a few tunes from their Witch Cult Today album - the almighty Dunwich and Drugula, however, the show soon bled into unknown territory for me, each track bookmarked in plenty of stack worship…Somebody behind me was shouting Wizzzz-haaaard through the riff-soup, was half expecting Gandalf to come charging across on his white horse… Later, the band upped the tempo and a large proportion of the crowd went into a primitive scrum of pushed bodies - by the time Wizard left the stage in nasty fedback squeal, the crowd were pure wreckage…

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Made a few contacts over the weekend, for some reason I thought it would become a tech-nightmare but turned out to be easy-peasy, …within half an hour I was up banging the fuck out of metal sheeting through the ye old vomit amp… pushing the reverb as far as it could go… soaking up the raw hues in triplicate, smashing the cutlery with a ritualistic fervour. Stag antlers rising though of the mist… those gigantic Maplin transducers are the business… gotta master rhythm now.

Sunday stunt flying at Barbury fitted brilliantly to this Family Battle Snake freebie I found over at the wormhole… nylon ripping up the sky to imaginary drone, twas great fun trying to keeping everything airborne, adopting a crucifixion stance, and thankfully no youngsters floated away across the Ridgeway… plenty of 'did you see that Dad, no but I felt it, son!!!' moments…

Friday, September 04, 2009

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

I wrote this over the bank holiday, before the rain came a pouring down, before being wrapped in this felt greyness… like a soaked Beuys, something best conjured by Abwassermusik smudginess… the music shifting with the weather…

but on Monday there was this last song on the A side of Donovan’s Fairytale that was hitting me just as the sun was breaking out…

the voice was a perfect hush of drug-scope clusters… curling words falling into each other’s lap… bound across sparkling guitar work, leaving you slightly out of breathe. A crisp stream of pure Appalachian poetry, brazen in a dance of insecty baubles… an all too brief masterpiece that seemed to capture our fleeting Summers perfectly – Pick the flower and it will wilt…